Goodluck Jonathan ‘Ex-President misused oil savings,’ Amaechi says
Minister of Transportation and former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi has accused former president, Goodluck Jonathan of mismanaging Nigeria’s oil savings.
Amaechi said further that state governors under Jonathan demanded a share of the money because they noticed it was dwindling.
The minister made the comment on Wednesday, October 6, in response to former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who said that governors under Jonathan are the reason why Nigeria doesn’t have savings.
“I
heard Mrs Okonjo-Iweala say that in the past administration, governors
were unwilling to save; she is 30 percent correct and 70 percent
incorrect,” he said during an interview on NTA, according to The Cable.
“In
2009, we had an economic crisis so President Yar’adua put $1billion in
the economy so no one felt the crisis. I can’t remember what was left in
that account, the excess crude account.
“During
Goodluck Jonathan, every month when the governors went for the economic
council meeting, the amount in the account kept dropping. If we asked
about what happened to the money, the response we got was that the
president approved for it to be spent.
“So
we said can we please share this money because the rate at which it was
going, the president would have continually approved $1billion to spend
and we won’t know what we are spending for and they won’t give us an
account.
“So we told the vice president
and the minister for finance that there was a need for us to share part
of this money and we began to agitate. They now agreed to share part of
the money and they did. In the first six months of Goodluck Jonathan,
oil subsidy increased. Governors started complaining and then we had a
meeting in the office of the president’s wife.
“At
the meeting, we asked for assurance that the presidency would no longer
collect for oil subsidy and he promised. It is not right for Mrs Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala to say governors were not willing to save; governors were
willing to save but we insisted on sharing the money when we saw that
the money was not properly managed," he added.
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